Minimum Regret, Maximum Guilt
by mark winters
Summary: Commander Essence Shepard must face the challenges of saving the Universe from the Reaper threat while dealing with the consequences of her own actions. Story of Mass Effect 2 that focuses heavily on how Shepard deals with the stress of saving humanity.


A/N: A few things before we begin.

Uno: This is my first story to the site and I hope everyone enjoys what they find inside, but this is not written for your personal enjoyment as much as it is for me liberating myself from a story that has been growing within me since the original Mass Effect was released.

2: My writing style may seem a little chaotic, occasionally bouncing between first and third-person perspectives or sudden tense changes. It's simply the way the story comes out and I do indeed try to edit around it. Though it doesn't always work... Anyway, I will try to make these transitions as easy and seamless as possible, I want you to be able to read the story without having to draw a little whiteboard map to follow me. Haha

3: I do tend to get bored or have my mind bunny trail, and yes I am male so many of these bunny trails include sex, violence, or gratuitous amounts of both, but I will confine these to separate chapters if I feel the need to include them. If something seems random, such as I suddenly include a steamy chapter out of nowhere, please do not consider it cannon to this story unless I say so. And I will A/N to let you know if something is cannon or not. :)

4: I am a male and the main character is female. It simply fits the way I want the story to go, and as this little project progresses you will see why.

5:Disclaimer!: Obviously I do not own BioWare, Mass Effect, or any of the idea's, thoughts, or concepts expressed within that said company has explicit and legal rights too. I do however own the idea of the character Essence, and her personality though not her title, rank, nor likeness. If I did, you can bet your sweet ass I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. I would be taking a bath in a tower of gold in a very Scrooge McDuck like fashion.

6: The M rating is for certain risque interludes that may (more then likely) show up, as well as language, violence and adult themes other then sex. (Hence the Hurt/Comfort genre)

7: Reviews of all shades are welcome, and I hope you will enjoy this story. :D

* * *

Commander Essence Shepard watched with disinterest as Jokers hands flitted over the controls of her ship, correction **his** ship, the Normandy. Normally she would be helping watch the scanners or back in the CIC, making sure that nothing and no-one was sneaking up on the small craft, but familiarity had bred contempt. And Essence was about as familiar with these "Geth Hunts" as one could be, and she absolutely loathed them. It had been almost 3 months since the attack on the citadel and the Geth had simply vanished with the death of Sovereign. As far as Shepard was concerned, this was just another busy work mission that the council was sending her on to keep her away from any more public spectacle. For that reason alone she would have loathed the mission, but it also kept her away from Virmire. Virmire, a paradise world with a dirty little secret as hidden and devastating as a worm working its way through a fresh apple.

The planet had been a secret hiding base for the rogue Specter Saren and his Reaper ally/master Sovereign, Shepard's team had been forced to set off a nuclear device in the base to prevent Saren from acquiring an army of Krogan, and in the process, had been forced to leave behind Kaidan Alenko. If there was one place in the entire Universe, besides curled up in her bunk pretending that none of this had ever happened while her father brought her some of his Alliance Navy renowned chicken soup, it would be on Virmire searching for Kaidan. She had been forced to leave him behind so that the nuke could be safely detonated, and though she had ordered him to leave his position and run as far and as fast as he could, there had simply been no trace of him anywhere when she had demanded they stop and look before returning to Council Space. Now that they were out of the line of fire, however momentary a respite it would prove to be, she felt the burning need to return to Virmire and find, at least some trace, of her former Lt. With a discontented sigh she banished the thoughts from her mind and turned her attention back to Joker.

"Well Mr. Maroue, is there anything out here?" Joker simply shook his head while trying to think of a witty retort or comment to cheer up Essence. She only called him by his name when she was upset by something, and when Shepard was upset everyone was miserable. He slightly envied her it, but the woman had the uncanny ability to affect everyone around her by sheer force of personality.

"Nothing. Its almost like we're in space or something." A silent and, Joker hoped, invisible cringe followed the words. It was certainly one of his worse jokes, and he knew it. Never-the-less Shepard made a slight noise, almost like a person clearing her throat, and Joker new his jest had at least provoked some reaction from her.

"Well at least our reports to Captain, I mean Counselor, Anderson will be consis-"

"Ma'am! Sensor reading at 6-O'clock high! it's a big one too!" Shepard whipped around to glare at the Ensign who was managing the ships sensors and had just called out the report. She hated it when people contradicted Jeff, usually because they were either being stupid or just plain wrong. Essence was readying a first-class tongue lashing for the slightly younger woman when Joker let out a small yelp of surprise.

"She's right! They just came out of nowhere and we've got a weapons systems lock!" He "pulled" hard left and the ship arced out that way, its starboard side thrusters burning hot and loud enough to be heard through the hull at the sudden strain being forced upon them.

"How is that possible!" Navigator Pressley demanded from the hall, he had made his way towards the cockpit as soon as the sensors station had given a contact reading and was now only a few feet behind Shepard, who was clinging onto the back of Jokers chair as she tried to compensate for the sudden shift in gravity. "We're running full dark, no sensor system in Council space, hell even in the Traverse, should be able to pick us up!" A deep red warning rune flashed on an over head display as a bright yellow beam flashed by the port side window, and Joker threw the ship into a steep dive.

"Well clearly they can see us somehow!" Essence called back as she pushed herself away from the seat and half ran, half stumbled down the hallway towards her quarters and armor, worried shouts chased her that the ship was apparently larger then any Geth vessel on record and that its weapons radiation signature had no match in any Alliance database, not even with the extremely new and limited information on Sovereign. Halfway there a second contact alarm rang out which was quickly followed by several warning klaxons as the other ships weapons burnt through the Normandy's shields and singed the hull, pealing away a layer of hull and exposing the ships superstructure to the dark void. Shepard threw herself down right side staircase that led down into the crew quarters as Joker pulled another impossible turn that lifted her off the deck plating for a few seconds, before slamming her back down. A slight touch of her biotic power and she managed to land on her feet, a soft cushioning of eezo enhanced powers stopping her from harming anything vital. As soon as she touched down the ships lighting changed from its normal well lit interior to a dull crimson as the rest of the warning klaxons sounded and a shot from the perusing vessel punched through something critical. One blessing was the emergency gravity generator had decided to finally kick in. That generator was the one designed to keep gravity, well, gravitational and everything on the floor during intense maneuvers like the ones Joker was now performing, but it had been on the fritz since the battle of the Citadel.

Shepard quickly pieced her armor onto her body, giving each seal a cursory check before locking her helmet in place and then being thrown backwards across the room, almost in the same instant as locking her helmet on, due to another shot from the perusing craft. Now the damage was evident inside the ship as small fires flared up in the cyro rest area and automated sprinklers turned on, jetting a non-liquid based, fire-retardant foam at the flames. The flames were growing to be too much to handle for the automated systems, as fried electrical systems sparked additional fires of their own, so Essence snatched up a hand-unit to join the battle against the flames. She had just managed to fight down one small fire when another explosion rocked the ship and Shepard would have been tossed on her rear, again, had Ashley Williams not caught her and held the Specter up.

"Shepard, we have to get off this thing!" Shepard looked into the other females helmet and felt a slight tinge of bitter resentment that Ashley was still alive and Kaidan was not, a feeling that took her by complete surprise given the situation they were in, and quickly squashed the feeling while giving the Gunnery Sergeant a quick nod. She handed the women her extinguisher and pushed her towards a pod.

"Your right Ash, we need to abandon ship. Get as many people as you can and get off this tub! I have to go help Joker!" Williams turned back towards Shepard and took a step towards her.

"No way. Ill help you go get Joker, the others will be fine!" For a single moment Essence considered letting Ashley come with her, then the ship shook again as another beam tore into it and she shook her head. With a slight biotic shove she motioned Ashley towards the pods again.

"That's an order Sergeant! All hands are to abandon ship immediately!" She called out, straining to be heard over the fire and alarms, for some reason she couldn't fathom both women had left their suits communicators off, but she was thankful for it when she couldn't stop herself from whispering a promise that she wouldn't lose Ashley like she lost Kaiden. With that Shepard turned away and rushed back through the burning ship, silently wondering how many people had already died, and if any of them would even survive. The biotic Specter suppressed her dark wonderings long enough to flip on her radio and tell joker she was coming and then to marvel at the ragged hole that had once been her ships CIC. Several bodies were floating, cold and lifeless, in the vacuum and they almost immediately plagued her mind with doubts. For a moment all she could do was stand there beside what had once been the CIC console, rooted to the spot as she wondered if she would ever find Kaiden, and felt the hopelessness wash over her that he truly was dead. That they all were just mere heartbeats from being dead. A bright slash of yellowish light split the darkness and spurred her into motion once again, and she, as quickly as the zero gee conditions would allow, made her way to the cockpit where she found Joker violently struggling with the dying ships controls.

"C'mon Joker, its time to go!" She reached down and grabbed an arm as he still desperately fought with the thrusters, trying to dance and skate the ship out of even more harm.

"I can do this!" He protested, straining against her somewhat lax grip. "We can still make it!" Essence grabbed his other arm and lifted his fingers away from the controls.

"This ship is dead Joker! And we need to get off of her before we end up that way too! Now come one! I didn't come all the way up here to get you, just so you could kill us trying to out fly that monster!" Joker let himself be pulled away from the consol with a sigh that was barely audible out of his respirator and shuffled over to the escape pod. He knew Shepard was right, but he did not want to admit the Normandy was really dying. Just as they managed to open the pilot escape pod door and Joker had climbed in, another shot speared the Normandy and blasted Shepard away from the door. The last of the ships gravity went out and as she bounced off the far wall, Essence was able to stare in horror at the limp, crushed, singed, and lifeless form of Navigator Pressly as he began on his eternal voyage in the dark. Again a crushing despair and sense of absolute fatalism fell upon her, and it was all she could do to give herself a little bionic nudge towards the launch panel for the pod as she drifted haphazardly towards the deep openness of space. Her fingers brushed ever-so-lightly and momentarily across the button, but it was enough to launch the pod. As the doors slammed shut and the pod launched away as sudden feeling of wrongness seeped into Essences body. It wasn't that she was bout to die, the Commander had come to terms with that, she was okay with that, her own death was nothing of consequence. It was….the cold!

She was cold! Freezing even! And that wasn't right, neither was her sudden shortness of breath! With a cry of despair and fear, Essence Shepard tried, vainly, to block the holes in her suit caused by ragged pieces of debris from the last explosion. Her suit had been penetrated in multiple places and even as she scrambled to try and cover them with her hands she knew it was too late, she knew it was only a matter of time until… 

* * *

As the still flaming wreckage of the Normandy entered the planets upper atmosphere, so too did Commander Essence Shepard's body, it completed one and a half orbits before violently slamming into the snow packed ground at a speed in excess of 300 miles-per-hour and gouging a crater fifteen feet in length and seven feet in depth. Humanity's latest hero, the first human Specter, and savior of the Citadel was dead, her body a ruined remain of regret and despair on some backwater world that few people knew of and even less cared about. The Systems Alliance, not wanting to crush the already fragile moral of its subjects, listed her, officially, as MIA. Unofficially, almost a year later, a small memorial service was held aboard the Citadel for Captain Anderson, Admiral Hackett, Miss Hannah Shepard, and the crew of the SSV Normandy that survived the encounter. Her body was never recovered and even Joker had been unable to see her fate, locked as he was in the back of the capsule. The only person that had did not attend the service was her companion, Liara T'soni who said she was "busy looking for an old friend".


End file.
